Rob Tisinai of Box Turtle Bulletin has happened upon an interesting online service being offered by one Reverend Bob Larson: a Demon Test®. For $9.95, you can take the test and figure out whether you have a demon–the kind that, according to Larson’s FAQ, “incites sin in the hearts of the morally weak: lust, homosexuality, pedophilia and adultery.” In addition to his stated homophobia, Larson, a televangelist and radio host, has carved out a niche as an exorcist for hire. The countercult Christian Research Institute has referred to Larson’s public exorcisms as “sideshows.”
If you do take the test and learn that you have a demon, you can pay Reverend Bob more money in an Encounter Session or Intensive Session to help you rid yourself of it. What puzzles me is that there seems to be a simpler way: Larson’s own FAQ explains that if you’re worried about having an undetected demon, you probably don’t. Perhaps the Demon Test® might be best purchased as a gift to the possessed, kind of like giving someone a bottle of mouthwash for their birthday.
Tisinai has bravely offered to take the test and find out if he himself has demons:
Encounter Session or Intensive Session — how to choose? It’s like picking between a happy ending and full release.
I have to admit, I’m fascinated. So here’s the deal: If I can get just one of you to sponsor mein the next AIDS/LifeCycle for $10 (or more), I will take the Demon Test® and report back on it.
Gentle readers, I for one can’t wait to find out what Rob learns. At the same time, it saddens me that some people are going to shell out their money to be told that an imaginary being is to blame for the problems in their lives.
Here are two tales of pain and suffering to get your weekend off to a good start!
As we all know, Fundamentalist Christians are Professional Victims, and view any situation in which they have to play along by the same rules as everyone else as abuse. So, the National Religious Broadcasters decided to get on the internet and find out which websites are being oh-so-totally-mean-and-hateful toward them, and here is what they found:
New Internet media giants such as Facebook, Apple and Google are not giving Christian and other faith-based groups a fair shake on the Web, according to a new report released Thursday by a religious broadcasters group.
The report, released Thursday by the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), stated that many of the biggest new Internet sites blocked Christian content and refused to accept faith-based advertisements. In particular, religious content taking a stand against homosexuality was blocked for fear of offending other users.
Yeah, most of those organizations have policies which prohibit hateful messages. Moving on:
Out of several major Internet-interactive “new media” platforms and service providers, only one – Twitter – did not exhibit a strong anti-Christian bias, according to the study.
140 characters of poorly spelled gibberish fits well with the fundamentalist wingnut platform, you see.
Here is something they seem to be particularly butthurt about:
As an example for their concerns, the NRB researchers noted that in March Apple removed the app for Exodus International, a Christian ministry that works with “individuals and families impacted by homosexuality,” according to the ministry’s website. The organization takes the position that homosexual acts do not correlate with biblical teachings.
Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr told FoxNews.com that the app “had indeed been deemed offensive and removed … [and] it violates the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.”
Apple officials acted only after a gay rights groups organized a petition protesting the app that attracted 146,000 signatures.
You all can go ahead and pat Truth Wins Out on the back, once again, for doing that. Hee hee. Anyway, that is the first way that the internet is being mean to fundamentalist wingnut Christians. The other one, from what I can tell, is similar in spirit to the Apple petition we launched back in the spring. It seems that PayPal has a stated policy against working with groups which incite hatred, violence, racial intolerance, etc., and an activist group called All Out has launched a petition to ask them to cease their relationships with several anti-gay hate groups, among them Porno Pete’s Dungeon of Whatever [AFTAH]. Here is how the dishonest children who write for LifeSiteNews are explaining this:
The homosexual organization behind the effort, All Out, claims that such organizations as Tradition, Family, and Property, and Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), as well as pro-family Christian activist Julio Severo, promote “hate, violence, and intolerance” and are “extremist.”
The two organizations are mainstream pro-family, Christian groups that reject hatred of homosexuals but uphold traditional sexual morality and oppose legal privileges for homosexuals. Julio Severo, who is also a LifeSiteNews.com translator, is recognized widely in Brazil as one of the country’s most prominent pro-life and pro-family activists; he teaches love of homosexuals while opposing the gay political agenda.
The petition is aimed at the three groups, along with the extremist Dove World Outreach Ministries, which provoked riots in Islamic countries recently when it threatened to burn the Koran, in an apparent attempt to imply a similarity between the groups.
It’s adorable that they’re calling Americans for Truth “mainstream,” when it is so extremist and hateful that many on the anti-gay side of the fence are embarrassed by it. And yeah, the inclusion of Terry Jones’ Dove World Outreach Ministries makes sense, because, yes, wingnut writer, the groups are pretty much just the same. One incites hatred against Muslims, the other against gays. Duh. Apparently PayPal has started to respond:
According to the European homosexual news service PinkNews, PayPal has responded by stating, “We take very seriously any cases where a user has incited hatred, violence or intolerance because of a person’s sexual orientation.”
Although it adds, “we also take into account the rights of free speech and freedom of religion,” PayPal reportedly goes on to note, “we regularly review organisations and websites that use our service, and stop working with those that break our Acceptable Use Policy.”
So, I guess we’ll see what happens with that. If it’s simply a matter, as it was with Apple, of the corporation’s own policies being violated and mean old gay activists pointing it out, then PayPal probably should cut ties with them. Porno Pete is whining about this at his hate blog, so if you’re interested in reading that, you know where to find it.
Anyway, to sum up: Fundamentalist Christians are victims, only and always, and the very interwebs are conspiring against them, and making sarcastic comments in their general direction.
In case this needs to be clarified, I’ll do it yet again: these corporations are not being anti-religious. They are opposing messages of hate that happen to come from a religious perspective. Islamist terrorist organizations spread hate and violence, and do so from a place of religion. Simply put, all religious beliefs are not the same, and people are really starting to wake up to the idea that you can cloak your hate in whatever you want, even religion, and it doesn’t change the fact that you’re spreading hate, and the fact that it’s religious hate doesn’t place a person or group above criticism. Deal with it.
An article in the Christian Post today is doing that thing that fundamentalists all do, all the time, annoying non-Christian writers like me and deeply offending the great majority of Christendom who aren’t unreconstructed bigots. They’re asking “Can Christians avoid being called haters for being against gay marriage?” Uh…well first of all, not all Christians are against marriage equality. Indeed, lots of them are all for it! Straight Christians, too! ”Are we haters for simply being pro-family?” Uh…well, if you only support families that fit your widdle daffynition of what constitutes a family, then yeah, you sort of are acting from a place of hate. It may be cloaked in nice Christian words, but…
Let’s just look at the article.
Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies with the Family Research Council, believes that Christians need to make it clear that they are motivated by love.
Thanks for your input, hate group leader who has called for gays to be exported from the United States. The idea that any human alive would be taking direction on “love” from a person such as Peter Sprigg would be offensive if it weren’t so ludicrous.
“I think that’s kind of the major challenge that we face,” he commented to The Christian Post. “We in the pro-family movement … those of us who are Christians, we know in our hearts that we are motivated by love, not hate. The definition of love is not that you let people do whatever they want.”
Ah, so this kind of illuminates one of the silly things that fundamentalist Christians believe about themselves. These people who haven’t contributed a major scientific or artistic breakthrough in Western society in quite awhile nonetheless feel that they are The Arbiters [the loving, disciplinary parents, if you will], for the entire rest of society, even though their own record on the principles they espouse is no better than the rest of the population, and is often worse. They simply believe they are better. The word for this is “supremacist,” and “love” is nowhere in the definition.
“The essence of love,” he added, “is to desire the best for someone, and to act to bring that about. And I would argue that’s what we think we’re doing.”
Here is another silly thing that fundamentalist Christians believe about themselves. Starting from a place where they actually believe they have the right answers [they who believe that the earth is 6,000 years old and under whose tutelage we never would have had antibiotics], they feel they have the right to act to control other people’s lives in order to “bring about the best” in the rest of society. The problem is that Peter Sprigg is not an expert on any damn thing! The actual experts — scientists, the medical profession, the mental health community — uniformly state that homosexuality is a natural part of the human condition, is not a disorder, and should be treated just as heterosexuality is. Therefore, taking the statements of actual experts, repealing DOMA and bringing about full equality for gays and lesbians is simply doing what is verifiably the best thing for our community. Peter’s opinion on the subject is irrelevant, as the fact that he has some thoughts about what’s written in an old book have absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand. I have some thoughts about that book, too, but I certainly wouldn’t use them to deny anyone their constitutional rights.
They talked to another bigot for the article, an “ex-gay” one:
But what worries Greg Quinlan, president of the Pro-Family Network, is that many Christians aren’t standing in opposition to gay marriage for the sake of getting along with those on the other side of the debate.
“I am intolerant,” he said, “but I don’t hate. Yes, there is a difference … We have to turn the definitions around.”
Good luck.
“Christians have to understand how to tell the truth in love, but it isn’t love until you tell the truth. Now, we have to not be concerned about what other people think of us. We have to stop trying to be nicer than Jesus.”
You aren’t nicer than Jesus, Greg. You and your kind lie about, malign and spread hate against an entire minority population in this country in service of your conception of a deity. At least when Jesus was in a mood he acted with a shred of integrity.
“When somebody calls us a hater … we need to be all the louder, all the more persistent and consistent with our message,” he said.
When you’re correctly called a hateful bigot, hate louder, he seems to be saying!
Well then, that was fun. Until next time one of these fools says something stupid…
Oh, here’s a thing. As we all know, fundamentalist Christians are nothing if not completely sane, so here is a Christian prophet named William Tapley, the, um, “Third Eagle of the Apocalypse” and a self-styled expert on Revelation, just cold looking around the Denver airport for things that look like talliwackers and then making us a YouTube video to warn us of said talliwackers, which are evil, because dong shapes distract us from the TRUE symbol of life, which is the CROSS, which looks nothing like a talliwacker. Also, he says that the architects involved in designing the Denver airport and going to have to answer to god for putting all those weenuses everywhere, hidden in plain sight.
Apparently, you see, Japan is full of atheists, and God decided to grab them by the throat and shake them in order to show them his love.
I think clips like this are important because they really show us what sorts of people we’re fighting against for our equal rights. Here we have a girl who obviously thinks that she means well, but is so brainwashed into her belief system that she not only does not understand that the shifting of the earth’s plates has absolutely nothing to do with the religious beliefs of the people living atop them, but also that the idea of a deity who would destroy and kill in order to show his “love” would be called an sociopathic abuser, if we were talking about a human.
Warped conception of love? Glaring disconnect from reality? Yep, that’s what we fight against for our equal rights.
UPDATE: Some people think this is a Poe. Discuss in comments. This is the thing about Poes, though, and it’s kind of the point. If you are not familiar with Poe’s law, it is this:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.
They are often indistinguishable. This is why so many people continue to be taken in by ChristWire.org.
Dr Sheila Matthews wants to European Court to rule on whether professional medical advice regarding the best interests of children should take precedence over homosexual rights.
Dr Matthews claims she was forced out of her job on the Northamptonshire Council Adoption Panel because of her Christian beliefs that children should be placed with a father and mother rather than a homosexual couple.
She resigned from her post in March after being barred from sitting on the adoption panel.
[...]
Dr Matthews said: “I sought to do my job to a high standard to support the making of good decisions in the best interests of these children.
“I understand that legislation permits same sex couples to adopt and they are positively encouraged to apply, but I have professional concerns, based on educational and psychological evidence, of the influences on children growing up in homosexual households and I feel this is not the best possible option for a child.”
Here is the thing: Dr. Matthews may be claiming that she has “professional concerns, based on educational and psychological evidence,” but she’s being represented by the UK equivalent of the Alliance Defense Fund, which is what fundamentalists do when they want a special pass to practice in an inferior way due to their religious beliefs. No one is “discriminating against her,” any more than they would be if she, due to deep religious beliefs, refused to prescribe medicine for her patients, relying instead on prayer. Dr. Matthews is obviously entitled to her beliefs, but she’s not entitled to give poor care to other, unwitting people. But that is what she seems to want.
Enough is enough: from my Facebook page: No shame: HRC and other homosexual groups are exploiting the tragic suicides of sexually confused kids to attack religion.
Oh.
Peter LaBarbera is mad at the Human Rights Campaign for telling the truth and drawing the very short line between churches and politicians [and the blurry line between] who spend their lives engendering hatred against gay people among the most easily led, least educated members of our society, and the easily predictable result — that gay kids end up getting the message very early, and so do their bullies, that they’re worth less than the rest of the population, that God made them evil, etc., which leads to a much higher depression and suicide rate among gay teens.
So, I’m guessing Peter is saying he doesn’t like having this blood on his hands?
Well, there’s one simple solution for that: Millions have left the fundamentalist Christian lifestyle, and they’re happier, more well-rounded, more loving, and simply better people for it. Just pray this simple prayer:
“If I only had a brain…”
God I’m sorry, that’s a song from The Wizard of Oz, not a prayer.
My bad.
Here’s Kathy Griffin explaining how the bigotry and hatred that comes from places like the Mormon church turns into “trickle down homophobia,” which ends with dead children’s bodies. It’s very simple, and unlike “trickle-down economics,” it actually exists!
Delaware’s Republican nominee for the Senate is turning out to be treasure trove of anti-gay nonsense and idiocy. TS at Instaputz has helpfully compiled a bunch of Christine O’Donnell’s anti-gay quotes over the years, so that we can see how little she’s evolved over time. For instance, here’s what she had to say about the gay pride parade in New York City in 2000:
O’DONNELL: But let me tell you something! They – homosexuals’ special rights groups can get away with so much more than nobody else can!
COLMES: Well, what are they getting away with here, Christine? Tell me what you’re seeing…
O’DONNELL: They’re getting away with nudity!
FAY: Oh, right.
O’DONNELL: They’re getting away with nudity! They’re getting away with lasciviousness! They’re getting away with perversion!
FAY: Oh, Christine…
O’DONNELL: They’re getting away with blasphemy!
OMG! They’re getting away with blasphemy! Which is completely legal in the United States, which has a secular government and Constitution! OMG!
On the Ryan White Care Act in 1995, in her work for Concerned Women for America:
The Ryan White Care Act provides money for community-based counseling centers. While that may sound noble and compassionate, we know from experience that “AIDS education” becomes a platform for the homosexual community to recruit adolescents and lure teens into a self-destructive sexual lifestyle.
Helping AIDS patients might “sound noble and compassionate,” but really, when you look at it from Jesus’s perspective, screw them!
I’m sort of glad the Republicans are nominating all these Christian tea-hadists, actually. Often the most extreme statements of the extremist Christian right go unnoticed by much of the population, but now? Haha, they’re national candidates! We get to show everybody what headcases they really are.
Aside from the story of the day, about George Rekers, the NARTH board member, co-founder of the Family Research Council, and BFF of James Dobson, using his lunch money to purchase a male escort to “lift his luggage” (that is what she said), two blog posts struck me as impressive today.
The first is from Lindsay Beyerstein, on the subject of “bigotry” and the labelling of anti-gay marriage activists as such. It was inspired by a minor controversy which erupted when the fantastic Dave Wiegel, who covers the various lairs, sweatshops and basement sex dungeons of the conservative world for the Washington Post, tweeted the following:
“I can empathize with everyone I cover except for the anti-gay marriage bigots. In 20 years, no one will admit they were a part of that.”
Agreed. As you can imagine, though, anti-gay wingnuts were apoplectic over the suggestion that they’re nothing more than bigots. But that’s what they are, for the most part. They hide behind religious language, but at the root of that is pure bias and yes, bigotry. Lindsay explains:
Absolutely! Opposing gay marriage is the moral equivalent of supporting anti-miscegenation laws.
By definition, bigots are people with unshakable baseless prejudices. There is absolutely no reason, besides blind prejudice, to deny same sex couples the right to civil marriage.
You can use religious language to express your belief that gays and lesbians are disgusting second class citizens unworthy of rights that heterosexuals take for granted, but it doesn’t make your position any less bigoted. Logically, there is no reason to put same-sex relationships on a lesser legal footing than opposite sex unions, unless you think there’s something wrong with them.
You can insist you don’t wish gay people any harm. Perhaps not. But there were lots of pro-segregationists who didn’t wish ill upon black people, but still didn’t want to drink out of the same fountains. They too were bigots.
You can point out that discrimination against gays and lesbians is a longstanding tradition, but that doesn’t excuse your bigotry. If anything, it makes it worse. It was one thing to fear what the expansion of gay rights might do when gays and lesbians had no rights. Today we’re decades into gay liberation and none of the dire predictions have come true. For example, children raised by same-sex parents are at least as healthy and well-adjusted as those raised by opposite sex parents–and no more likely to identify self identify as gay.
I think we actually do our movement a disservice when we shy away from calling a spade a bigot, out of some (in my opinion) misguided effort to find “common ground.” This is actually not a conversation between two equally valid sides. There is the side that believes in liberty and equality, and there is the side which wishes to use its religious convictions and asinine, entirely incorrect version of history as an excuse to take rights, freedoms, and responsibilities away from people they’ve never met. They have a right to the opinions, but we have a responsibility to call those beliefs what they are. Any deference to the fact that many of them don’t think they’re being bigoted is simply counterproductive.
Later in her post, Lindsay alludes to the fact that our media has gotten so pathetically lazy, looking as it does for false equivalence in every story, as a possible cause for certain people’s fear of using accurate terminology to describe the people who fight to make our lives worse:
The idea that the word “bigot” should be off-limits to proponents of tolerance is absurd. That would mean that any attribution of bigotry is logically self-defeating. Surely, even Lewis would acknowledge that there are some people out there who deserve the label. Is it unacceptably intolerant to describe the KKK as a bigoted organization? Maybe the language of corporate journalism is so debased that it’s only acceptable to say that “some civil rights groups allege that the KKK is bigoted.”
Indeed.
That brings us to the second post I saw today that I loved, from Simon Sheppard, the self-described “cranky old fag” at Carnal Nation. In his piece, he addresses the weirdness that inevitably occurs when people attempt to debate things as vital as civil rights on the platform of religious faith. We go through this here a lot — some of our writers and commenters are people of deep religious faith, while others, like me, stand proudly among the ranks of the godless. This leads to the employment of very different tactics when one of our fundamentalist chew toys comes along and stinks up the comments section, with the believers arguing on the basis of religious faith, while we godless take the Fundamentalists to the natural dead-ends of their arguments by simply saying “prove it.” Sheppard’s piece really encapsulates why I believe that, regardless of whether any of us does or doesn’t have religious faith, arguing about civil rights in religious terms is a losing game. He starts out by deconstructing the problems with the argument, common among religious people, that “God made me gay”:
The impulse to stake that claim is understandable. If being queer isn’t a choice, then we deserve equal rights, right? And if we’re an intended part of some divine creation, then GLBT rights even has a heavenly imprimatur, like not eating meat on Fridays.
But, but, but…
(…)
First off, it shouldn’t matter why some of us have turned out queer: We should have our fucking rights regardless. After all, religion isn’t an inborn characteristic, but it’s a protected class anyway. Sorry, Pope, but your flock has chosen a Catholic lifestyle, so they don’t deserve civil rights. Nope, Miss Benedict wouldn’t go for that at all. But somehow, we’re all tangled up in debates about genetics and psychology and stuff, when we should just be insisting on our right to be different, even if it’s by choice.
Take a moment to write down the phrase “Miss Benedict,” because you’ll want to drop it in conversation. I know I already have.
The point, though, is that it doesn’t matter whether or not a person believes that God made him/her gay. Not for the conversation that we’re having anyway. That might be a great conversation between two religious believers, where no one is actively working to take away the rights of the other. Note, though, that he’s not saying that it is a choice (I know how our Fundamentalist readers intentionally misread things). He’s saying that it’s simply irrelevant to the argument. And indeed, Sheppard argues that by debating civil rights for LGBT people in religious terms, we’re giving in to our opponents’ premises:
[F]aith is, by definition, impervious to evidence and logic. So by arguing on religious grounds, we’re basically ceding the ground to our foes.
“God made me gay, and He loves me just the way I am.”
“No, He didn’t and He doesn’t and He wants you to change.”
“Prove it.”
“No, you prove it.”
And there the matter sits. Theological standoff.
In other words, when liberal believers argue with conservative believers, they both put themselves in the situation I described above, when we atheists shut down the fundamentalists by saying “prove it” so fast their heads spin. And that’s not a good place to be! Understand, though, that I’m not touching the subject of whether or not religious faith is reasonable or beneficial or anything like that. This is about tactics. And since liberal religious believers do indeed tend to have a better grasp of reality and logic than conservatives do, it’s good to consider which lines of reasoning are the best.
Fundamentalist religious believers will always believe they “won” the argument with liberal religious believers, simply because they’ve had it drilled so deeply into their skulls that they’re the only ones who take their faith seriously. It seems to me that, religious faith or no, those who care about justice, fairness, equality and love would do better to argue more like the atheists.
Later on in the piece, Sheppard describes exactly what tends to happen when religious people knock heads over LGBT equality:
Believers on our side will nod; antigay churchers will point out what grumpy old Saint Paul said; and we nonbelievers (the vast majority of whom are, incidentally, not antigay) will just think Whatever.
You might, of course, point out that the apparently antigay garbage in the Good Book is the leftovers of a benighted, unscientific age, and mistranslated to boot, but that would bring the rest of the Testaments into question, leaving you somewhat adrift, belief-wise. You might point out that, for whatever reason, there have always been gay humans, bonobos, walruses, and rams. You might even try the scientific method, citing research by the bucketful.
But ultimately, none of that is going to make a whole lot of difference to holy-roller homophobes. Because belief doesn’t care about rational debate. The best response to “God Hates Fags” is not “God Loves Fags.” It’s “This Is A Fucking Secular State, You Inbred Morons.”
Amen!
The point is, when it comes to any argument about our civil rights, we have to be clear about where the Religious Right can shove their religious arguments. They are that irrelevant in the secular United States of America.
Now, you may be saying, “But if we’re both Christians, and just see things differently, maybe I can teach the bigot something!” Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. But I’m going to suggest something here: If you are a Christian who believes in full equality for women, men, all races, LGBT people, etc., then you do not share a religious faith with bigots like Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Peter LaBarbera, or any of the rest of the horde of Fundamentalist Christians who waste their precious lives trying to hurt families they’ve never met. Your faith might share a name with theirs, but that’s where the similarities end.
The quicker we all realize this — that the Supreme Court didn’t strike down anti-miscegenation laws in Loving because they believed that’s what God wanted, but that there was no rational reason under our Constitution to deny loving couples the right to marry because they were of different races, just as there is no rational reason to deny loving couples the right to marry because they’re the same gender — the quicker we’ll be done fighting for our full equality.
People of faith who support full equality are being attacked in the same way people of no faith are being attacked, by a group of people who believe they have the right to lord their religious beliefs over the rest of the population.
Well, as those two posts explained, those who would fight against equal rights for LGBT Americans are bigots, and this is a secular state.
Over the past week or so, we’ve had more than our normal collection of fundamentalist, anti-gay commenters, who seem to think that they have something to add to the discussion. They quote their same six Bible verses, say the same words every Fundamentalist before them has said, and then, if they choose to stick around and argue, they become chew toys for our normal commenters. I’m fine with all of this. It’s part of having an open commenting system and stating your opinion on the internet. If you hold positions with holes big enough to drive several Mack trucks through, you open yourself up for that.
But I always notice that one of the primary reasons our Fundamentalist visitors become broken records so quickly is that their beliefsystem, i.e., that homosexuality is a sin (in whatever meaningless words they use to say so), is one of the quickest dead-end arguments around, as the commenters revert to the aforementioned clobber passages again and again, while different pro-equality commenters use one of several different strategies to take them to that quick dead-end. Those of us who are believers tend to try to explain that, when you look at said passages from a more educated point of view, taking into context culture, original languages, science and reality, that it’s hard to actually make the case that the Bible condemns loving same-sex relationships. Those of us who are atheists don’t tend to get into all of that, simply leading the commenters quickly to the dead-end of their arguments from authority, saying “prove that the authority in your book exists, and furthermore that your interpretation of that authority exists, and we’ll talk.”
Those who fight against the existence of LGBT people tend to have very little exposure to actual gay people. If they do, it’s often through their church, which might be affiliated with an “ex-gay” business, and as such, their exposure is to people who are broken (not that we all aren’t), and who have been swindled by “ex-gay” leaders into blaming their own poor choices or circumstances on their sexuality, rather than actually taking responsibility for their own lives. Rarely, if ever, do you hear a fundamentalist Christian testifying on gay people as we are. Rarely do you hear them railing against the lesbian couple who lives next door, who has been together for 30 years, or the gay guys down the street, together, for 15 years, raising children, driving Suburbans. These Fundamentalists do not understand or are unwilling to acknowledge that these LGBT people exist, and not only that, but that we’re common.
I understand why it’s important for their handlers (clergy, anti-gay Religious Right leaders, etc.) to shield them from the reality of the fabric of LGBT existence. I often quote the statistic that when someone knows a gay person, they tend to vote 3 to 1 in our favor when the opportunity comes up. If what Religious Right leaders said about gay people held even a shred of truth, you wouldn’t expect this to be the case. One of the favorite clobber passages of Christian Fundamentalists is, of course, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, which says:
9 Know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortionists, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you: but you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
Because these verses are often poorly translated to include the word “homosexual,” our Fundamentalist chew toys feel that this verse is “proof” that gays can change our sexual orientation. (Again: Poor translation. Argument from authority, prove it, prove it, prove it.) What often goes overlooked, though, is that one of the gaping holes in the Fundamentalist argument is contained in this very passage, staring them in the face. Let’s pretend for a second that “homosexual” was a decent translation for the Greek words arsenokoitai and malakoi. (As with all games of “make-believe,” it’s important that only those with a firm grasp on reality play. Sorry, Fundamentalists.) Remember what I was saying about how knowing a gay person makes a person much more likely to support us? Tell me which other sins in that vice list above work the same way. Do you support thieves more by understanding thieves? Are you more likely to support an alcoholic’s drunkenness by getting to know them better? Do you tend to feel better about extortionists once you bond with the couple down the street that, you know, happens to be a little bit Mafia?
But yet, people tend to like LGBT people a lot more when they know us personally. When the nice couple with three kids, or the couple with no kids but who throw fantastic dinner parties for the neighbors (because come on, some stereotypes are true) moves in, people become more likely to love and support us.
That implies that there is something seriously off with the Fundamentalist interpretation of that passage, now doesn’t it?
No, the reason it’s important for Religious Right leaders and ex-gay entrepreneurs to shield their minions followers from the reality of LGBT people is because to be honest with them, to encourage them to actually know us, brings them into a head-on collision with another passage in their Bible, and it’s a fairly popular, well-known passage. Matthew 7:17-20:
17Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
This passage, of course, bears the heavier weight of having been spoken by Jesus, after whom Christianity was named. It’s a very, very simple parable. Good people, good relationships, and good practices bear good fruit. Bad people, bad relationships, and bad practices, bear bad fruit. Indeed, Jesus here is engaging in one of his famous smackdowns of fundamentalist religious leaders, using the concept of the law of nature, that every tree bears fruit of its own kind, to illustrate the idea that religious leaders who leave a wake of pain and misery are, you know, probably not good. The stories and interactions shared by Fundamentalist Christians and ex-gay entrepreneurs, about gay people, tend to follow a similar outline:
1. I hated myself.
2. I “entered the homosexual lifestyle,” and became addicted to drugs/tried to kill myself/acquired HIV, etc.
3. I was rescued from “the homosexual lifestyle” by Jesus.
4. All of this was the fault of “the homosexual lifestyle.” Now if you’ll just sign here, and recruit five more people to be ex-gays, you’re done, and you’ll make residual income on everybody they recruit too!*
Standing as the negation to this narrative are millions of happy, well-adjusted gay people, who make things better for society, many of whom are in beautiful, quite normal marriages, some raising children, etc. They are bearing good fruit, just like good heterosexual relationships bear good fruit. Likewise, there are straight people and relationships which bear extremely bad fruit. Those which are abusive (whether physically or emotionally), those in which the husband treats his wife like property, those which are full of deceit and malice, etc. But we would never think to condemn heterosexuals as a whole for the worst examples of heterosexual relationships, because that would be insane. But yet our Fundamentalist chew toys don’t see the intellectual incoherence of doing that very thing as regards LGBT people.
The simple point is this: If you believe in the Bible, then you have to be willing to embrace the spirit of the text, and the words and stories of Jesus are kind of a trump card. If you analyze them in light of reality, in light of what we understand about people, then you have to deal with Matthew 7 as regards gay people. Because just as in the straight world, the best of gay relationships indeed bear much good fruit, bringing happiness, emotional fulfillment, stable family structures, and community support (and a million other things) to those in the relationships and the people around them.
And bad trees cannot bear good fruit.
Thus concludes your latest installment of “Bible Lessons with an Atheist.”
*Oh, you know one ex-gay business or another will discover network marketing before too long.
